The User's Edge : policies and procedures

8/26 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:31:00 GMT

Here are last week's most popular Forums posts as well as unanswered posts:

Most Popular Topics:

Unanswered Posts:

8/19 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:08:00 GMT

Here are last week's most popular Forums posts as well as unanswered posts:

Most Popular Topics:

Unanswered Posts:

The answer to the Brain Buster in this month's edition of The User's Edge is that the letters in "DRAGON LEWIS" can be rearranged to spell "A SINGLE WORD".

8/12 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:04:00 GMT

Here are last week's most popular Forums posts as well as unanswered posts:

Most Popular Topics:

Unanswered Posts:

4/28 Forums Roundup

Douglas Clinton — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:59:00 GMT

Here are last week's most popular forum discussions as well as unanswered posts:

Most popular topics:

Unanswered Posts:

A couple of users had questions about creating Policies and Procedures manuals this past week:

Join the discussion!

Query Qualities/Mail Musings/Report Roundup Crossover: Bring On The New Year

Douglas Clinton — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:05:00 GMT

The end of the year is a time of reflection and recapitulation. The Raiser's Edge can help you recognize the past year's top donors, analyze giving, and plan for a better year ahead.

Query is a fast and easy way to group donors you would like to recognize. To find donors whose cumulative giving exceeded a specific amount in the last year, create a new constituent query and filter on Summary Information, Summary for Gift, Total Amount greater than or equal to [specific amount]. In the total amount criteria window, select the Filter tab to add the date range criteria (e.g., Gift Date between 1/1/2008 - 12/31/2008).

Summary Information fields include default gift types, including Cash, Pledge, MG Pledge, Stock/Property, Stock/Property (Sold), Gift-in-Kind, Recurring Gift Pay-Cash, and Other, minus Write Off and MG Write Off (BB66390). To consider your own gift types (e.g., pledge payments instead of pledges), filter by Gift Type on the Filter tab.

Use Mail to thank donors for their gifts and appeal for new ones. In a recent post, Kevin Brunson discusses how to tailor your Donor Acknowledgement Letters to create specialized letters for each constituent. Only gifts marked as Not Acknowledged are included in Donor Acknowledgement Letters, and you can update the acknowledgement status during the merge process to make sure each gift is acknowledged only once.

Use Appeal Cards to remind constituents of ongoing appeals or to notify them of new ones. You can include information about a constituent's past gifts and include a suggested gift amount.

There are several options in Reports for evaluating previous fundraising strategies and planning new approaches. The Top Donors Report is used to identify top donors by percent or count, while the Donor Category Report divides donors into giving levels defined in Configuration, Tables. For more on the Donor Category report, check out another one of Kevin's posts.

Other useful reports include the Consecutive Years Report, which identifies donors who have given repeatedly over several years and the Comparative Report, which compares constituents' giving trends across two report periods. The Comparative Report is the most direct way to determine whose giving increased or decreased.

The Annual Statement Report itemizes each constituent's gifts on a separate page and provides donors with everything they need for tax purposes in one form. You can include all records, selected records, or one record, and filter by date range, campaigns, funds, appeals, constituent codes, attributes, and gift types. As shown below, the report includes Constituent Name (including an Address), Date, Gift Type, Amount, Receipt Number, and Receipt Amount as default columns.

As you develop an approach that suits your organization, document it in a policies and procedures manual. If you think that your manual would be useful to other organizations, add it as an attachment to a post in our shared client documents forum.

For more information on recognizing last year's donors, review Knowledgebase solution BB183476.

News You Can Use: PCI DSS Compliance

Kevin Brunson — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:08:00 GMT

The talk of the town is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). For those of you who haven’t heard of PCI DSS, you’re in the right place!

At its heart, PCI DSS is a set of standards developed and enforced by the credit card industry designed to keep credit card data secure. PCI DSS covers all aspects of an organization including policies and procedures, network infrastructure, firewalls, hardware, and more. To learn about PCI DSS, I suggest checking out the PCI Security Standards Council website. Their website provides a wealth of information about PCI DSS. Tge website is a self-assessment questionnaire that can help assess your organization’s readiness.

We are currently developing applications that adhere to the Payment Application Data Security Standards (PA DSS). Using PA-DSS applications is one way that we can help you work towards your PCI Compliance. All Blackbaud applications that store or process credit card data are in the process of being validated against PA-DSS guidelines.

Additionally, our hosting environment is being evaluated against PCI DSS. This environment hosts applications such as The Raiser’s Edge, NetSolutions, and Blackbaud NetCommunity.

To stay up to date with our efforts on helping you become PCI DSS compliant, visit the PCI Compliance blog. It is our goal to consistently update the PCI blog to keep you informed about what is going on at Blackbaud and with PCI DSS. I suggest adding the blog to your RSS reader so you’ll be notified when new posts are made.